


I Swear (I loved you till my dying day)

by SilverStudios5140



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Akashi Seijuurou-centric, Akashi being Akashi (Kuroko no Basuke), Angst, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Feelings Realization, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Marriage of Convenience, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Not Beta Read, Parenthood, References to Illness, Requited Unrequited Love, Sad, Sad boi hours, Self-Reflection, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25616569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverStudios5140/pseuds/SilverStudios5140
Summary: Maybe he resents her for leaving him alone with this crippling loneliness that he can only escape from by staring his own reflection in the face and recognizing that he has become everything he'd once sworn he wouldn't.Or maybe Seijuro just wishes she'd stayed.
Relationships: Akashi Seijuurou/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	I Swear (I loved you till my dying day)

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This story contains several mentions of death and terminal illnesses, and is entirely about the process of grieving.

It is a beautiful day outside. The sunlight blankets the world in the kind of golden warmth that one can feel settling deeply within their bones, the leaves of the trees whisper to each other secrets they hear on the light breeze, and the entire world seems to be colored in shades brighter than the ones it had been yesterday. The weather is pleasant, the sky is a beautiful blue with whimsical wisps of cloud floating in its expanse, and it is quite simply the kind of day that feels full of life. 

Seijuro thinks it is ironic that he-- along with everyone else standing in the room with him-- is in attendance at a funeral instead. 

The wake is being held in an atrium, and the rays of sunlight that filter in through the circular skylight overhead seem to cast a spotlight on the heavy coffin at the center of the room; almost like the heavens themselves demand they all look solely to the manifestation of the tragedy for which they have gathered today. As though anyone could even think of looking away in the first place. 

He thinks it is fitting. (Name) had been difficult to look away from even in life, and now in death, she is nigh impossible to ignore. 

The weight of her presence-- or rather, the lack of it-- sits far too heavily in the quiet room for anyone to forget. 

Vaguely, he is aware of someone crying. In fact, several people are shedding tears. Family, friends, and even the near-strangers they know more by name than face who are more faint of heart. And rightfully so. It is worth mourning the loss of a life so young. It is worth mourning the loss of a heart so pure and full of love. It is worth mourning the loss of someone like Akashi (Name).

Then why, he wonders, is it that he cannot bring himself to cry for her as well?

It must look slightly suspicious to the more shrewd attendees, but Seijuro hasn't come to a state of mind which would allow him to care just yet. To some, he might look cruel for his lack of tears (or any emotion for that matter). To others, he might even look strong because of the boy in his arms who is far too young to fully understand what death means but knows enough to understand that he has lost his mother and to cry for her because she will never be coming back to him.

She will never be coming back to either of them. 

Seijuro wonders if she would've even wanted to return to him. 

He should feel overwhelming grief. His heart ought to ache in yearning for something too far out of his reach now. He ought to be begging for time to turn back so he would've had more of it to spend in her name. He ought to be wishing for the beat of the heart that lies completely still in the body of the woman dressed in white silk as she lays in a casket of dark wood. 

Even in death, she looks beautiful. There is peace etched into the lines of her face, and the expression paired with her youthful face only makes her look as though she has drifted off to sleep rather than the realm of the dead. (Name) looks as though she embraced her passing with open arms and an open heart, accepting it in the final moments of her life and slipping away. 

Seijuro wonders why he's having so much trouble accepting it then. 

She'd been of poor health since their marriage. Her finally succumbing to illness shouldn't have been surprising to someone with the natural understanding of foresight like Seijuro, but here he is-- numb with the realization that she'd left him to battle the ghosts that haunt him in the land of the living. 

_It's your fault,_ a traitorous voice that sounds disturbingly like his deceased wife whispers in his head. _Your neglect weakened and put the sickness in her heart. It's your fault she's dead._

Admittedly, the blame has been swinging back and forth within the confines of his head, swimming to the forefront when he least expects it. 

He isn't ignorant. He knows he wasn't the best husband he could've been to her. Their marriage had been arranged by their families and built on the foundation of mutual benefit, and maybe some part of him had always resented her for being a reminder of the fact that his father has always had more control over his life than Seijuro himself. 

(Name) never said a word to accuse him of directing misguided blame on her. She'd always been too kind, too _good_ to do something like that. It's not like she'd had much say in their union either. And yet, he never detected an ounce of his frustration in her when she strove to slip in between the carefully structured pillars of his life to make herself a part of it. 

For her part, (Name) had done her best. She made unending efforts to see him despite his busy schedule and initial avoidance of her, and without him quite realizing it, she'd become something of a friend. A confidant. A companion with seemingly endless reserves of empathy and care. When it happened, he knew she'd grown to love him in a capacity Seijuro did not possess for her, but even then, (Name) had simply respected the bridge in between them that he refused to cross with a sad smile of understanding. 

Now, Seijuro can admit that he'd taken far more from (Name) than he'd been able to give her. He had taken her love, her friendship, her empathy, her joy and thought he was compensating for what he could not give by handing her his wealth, his house, his bed, his trust. (Name) had given him _everything_ she could possibly give him, and Seijuro had foolishly convinced himself it was okay to continue taking when he knew even then that there was so much he refused to give her. So much more she deserved from him. So much more he will never get to give the woman who had loved him until her dying breath.

He wonders if it is his fault her heart weakened over the years of their marriage. Now he understands the pain he put her through everyday until she couldn't physically take any more. He understands the suffering she hid behind her easy, accepting smile, and the pain he never bothered to try and search for because he has always been far too selfish to see those beyond himself.

He understands now that, perhaps, he'd never really known (Name) as well as she seemed to know him. 

He understands now that, perhaps, she had gotten tired of pretending that she wasn't in pain. She had gotten tired of waiting for him. She had decided she'd given enough to a man as unworthy of her love as Akashi Seijuro. 

He understands now that it is far too late.

* * *

Spending the night to keep vigil with her body only a few feet from him is nauseating. 

It is not as though he has never slept with (Name) before. They shared a bedroom until her sickness made it so she had to stay separately. Moreover, she was after all the mother of his child. 

But there is an understandably huge difference between spending a night with his wife when she is no longer alive. The difference is made larger when Seijuro is still reeling in his odd unfeeling state that is only broken by the waves of guilt that come and go, accompanied by cruel whispers that call him a murderer. 

The only light in the room is from the moonlight filtering in through the skylight overhead, and the way it seems to only bathe her casket in silver makes him think (Name) must be beloved to whatever deities may or may not exist because they seem determined to give her a beautiful goodbye whether or not Seijuro intends to put in the same effort. 

If only the gods had intervened when she'd been alive to understand that even if Seijuro had failed to love her, the world would not carry out the same mistake. 

The empty room with its empty chairs seems to be something straight out of the mind of a Victorian playwright. There lays the beautiful woman in her beautiful gilded casket, adorned in the silks of her white kimono with flowers pressed to her chest, her lover the only present life form as he mourns and keeps watch over her with only the moon and the air of death for company. 

How unfortunate that he is unable to cry for her. It truly ruins the poetry of what this instance could've looked like to the outsiders that do not exist in the lonely atrium where the wake of Akashi (Name) had been held. Although, perhaps, the fact that he feels like the one who killed her does some dramatic justice to how the scene could be beheld visually?

It's odd, he thinks. (Name) is the one who is no longer alive, and yet, Seijuro feels like he may as well be in a coffin as well. He certainly doesn't feel alive right now. Even less now that he has no appearances to keep up because nobody is around anymore. 

It begs the question of how much he's been punishing himself through all these years. He wonders if he'd feel this numb had he actually allowed himself to not keep (Name) at the constant distance he insisted on maintaining. Would he feel dead if he'd allowed himself to love her back? If the vague self-accusation that he is the one who killed her has killed some part of him as well, would loving and healing her have done the same for him as well?

There is no point in wondering now, of course. (Name) is dead, and Seijuro feels like he may as well be too. But there is also nothing else to do when the only one here is the corpse of his dead wife and he has hours ahead of him yet. 

If he could, he ponders if he'd feel resentful. Perhaps he'd resent her for the way she brought his own history full circle so he could stare himself in the face and see how he'd managed to come so far without getting anywhere at all. In the end, Seijuro had lost sight after losing his own mother and even though he's much better than he'd been in middle school when his mental state had been at its worst, he still let his resentment with his own limits rule over him. And, ultimately, the resentment he fostered grew into neglecting his wife who deserved only the best of him and got only the worst, and it is his fault that the sadness he didn't know she held close to her heart worsened her health until she contracted the illness that took her. 

His stupidity and shortsightedness has cost the world a wonderful woman with so much love to give. Seijuro's immaturity has cost his son his mother.

Growing up, Seijuro's worst fear has always been that he'd end up like his own father, and now, he is forced to realize that perhaps he already has. 

If he had the energy to do it, would he blame her for forcing that awful realization onto him?

Maybe he does resent her, even though he doesn't understand everything he's feeling and how it all boils down to this nothingness that settles like a bone-deep ache inside him, screaming that the only way to soothe the nothingness would be the presence of the woman who lays dead in the coffin in front of him. Maybe he resents her for leaving him alone with this crippling loneliness that he can only escape from by staring his own reflection in the face and recognizing that he has become everything he'd once sworn he wouldn't.

Or maybe Seijuro just wishes she'd stayed.

* * *

The cremation is a more private affair. The only ones present while (Name)'s body is slid into the cremation chamber are Seijuro and Naoyuki, although Seijuro wishes his son didn't have to witness even this. He knows from personal experience, after all, how it feels to see one's mother go in whole and come back as little more than a pile of ashes and bones. He knows how long it'll take to forget the weight of the realization that this is real and she's _gone._

When they are called back into the chamber an hour and half later, Naoyuki begins to cry again at the sight of the ashes. His hysteria makes it difficult to pick the bones out of the ashes together, but Seijuro doesn't say a word. He feels no frustration with how much his son struggles to hold his dead mother's toes using the chopsticks. He hasn't really felt much at all since the maids first burst into his room that fateful morning to announce how (Name)'s heart wasn't beating anymore. 

They pick up the urns, and Seijuro leads his son away from the crematorium in something akin to a daze. He has never really noticed the warmth of (Name)'s familiar presence at his side before, but now that she's gone, he observes how much colder everything feels. Somehow, paradoxically, the realization feels like it's burning him-- his own neglect eating away at him until he feels like his insides are going to wither away. 

(Name) may have been the one to have had her body cremated, but Seijuro sure feels like he's made of ashes too. 

He wonders if maybe (Name) did this on purpose. If she somehow knew that the moment she ripped herself out of his hold, she would be stripping away at the pillars upon which he had built himself and threatening to cause the collapse of the Emperor he has made himself out to be over the years. 

He wonders if the woman who had loved him for a lifetime had gotten sick of constantly being the only one to give everything she had and had decided to punish him for only giving her pain in return. He wonders if he deserves this. He wonders if he ever deserved her. 

It is surreal watching them bury her remains in the crypt below the stone monument. The only thing really left of her is the name engraved into the stone-- _Akashi (Name)._ Seijuro almost feels some sort of vindictive pleasure in reading the engraved _kanji_ and seeing his own surname there instead of the one she was born with. Almost like he's getting back at her for the state she's put him in by dying and leaving him with the endless stream of self-doubt and hatred and what-ifs that he did not ask for. It is a spot of dark irony, Seijuro thinks, that the name she will be remembered by is his even though she never really was his at all. 

Her parents had asked, equal parts hopeful and expectant, if Seijuro would get his name engraved on her gravestone as well-- painted in red to show that though he may have been left behind, he would live out the rest of his years in wait to follow behind her. Seijuro had declined. He had not expressed the dedication to (Name) even when she had been alive to see and maybe appreciate it. Doing so now would've felt like mockery of the pain he must've put her through and Seijuro isn't yet awful enough of a person to do that to her even though she isn't here anymore. 

And that's another thing. 

The fact that she isn't here anymore even though he keeps thinking she will be. Her clothes still hang in the closet next to his, the smell of her perfumes clinging to them. Her favorite bottle of lotion still sits on her nightstand, next to the book she'd never gotten round to finishing and her favorite scented candle. Her diary still sits in the drawer, tempting him to flip through it to try and understand (Name)'s pain and how she could have ever loved him through it all, like the curves and edges of her handwriting would give him answers to his most pressing queries. Her lipsticks still sit on her vanity, all the colors and textures he has kissed and tasted. Her favorite flavor of jam is still present at every breakfast, and her smile haunts him from every photograph of hers he cannot escape in the Akashi manor.

And he sees so much of her in Naoyuki as well that it's almost enough to finally break through and make him feel something through the haze he can't seem to escape. His son has his hair and his eyes, but Naoyuki's smile is the one he gets from his mother. The way he holds Seijuro's hand is how (Name) had, and the way he frames certain sentences and pronounces certain words scream of bleeding in (Name)'s influence. 

Naoyuki had trouble sleeping for several nights after (Name)'s death, but they found a music box she kept in her drawer and whatever lullaby it plays is enough to soothe his son to sleep because it creates the false sense of security (Name)'s presence had. Every night, as Seijuro sits at his son's bedside and waits for his breathing to even out, the lullabies seem to haunt and mock him because they carry memories of her that he needs for Naoyuki's sake.

Not that Seijuro has the heart to get rid of her things from anywhere in the house. He gathers them and keeps them close, pressing them to his heart because even though they are reminders of his failures and crimes, they are also reminders of _her_ and he cannot bear to bury her presence just yet. He clings to it with the stubbornness of a child, unable and unwilling to let go for reasons he has yet to learn. Somehow, sometimes, they are enough to trick him into thinking she's still here. That she's simply in another room for now, but they'll talk soon and he will tell her about his favorite flavors of tea and why he likes the flowers he does. 

She still lingers in the wedding band that Seijuro has yet to remove even though its twin no longer sits on her finger but in the drawer of his bedside table, on a chain so he can begin to carry it next to his heart when he works up the courage to do so. 

In some ways, he understands that (Name) was far braver than he could ever hope to be. For years, she put up with his distance and his inability to give her love and his selfishness. For years, she survived it and smiled through it and managed to not only love him but also Naoyuki. 

And now that she finally gave in and left him alone with his distance and the love he could not ( _would not_ ) give and his selfishness, Seijuro understands how consuming it is. He understands how terrifying it is to feel so unbearably alone. He had thought he'd been alone before, but he knows now that (Name) had always been there and he'd just been too caught up in himself to see it. 

(Name) was much braver than he can hope to be because Seijuro is little more than a battleship sinking beneath the waves that she has brought upon him. 

There is a lot he didn't know, Seijuro has begun to realize. He didn't know of the strength (Name) had been trying to hold onto for all their sake since the day she married into the Akashi name until she couldn't anymore. He didn't know of the pain he had been causing her and how she never blamed him for it because the curves and edges of her handwriting when she wrote his name in her diary was always full of her love for him. He didn't know that this silly, marvelous woman had felt guilty in her last days because she'd known she wouldn't survive and feared how it would affect the two people she loved most in this world. He didn't know that she chose to sign off on even her most private thoughts and words as Akashi (Name) because his name did not shame her even though he never chose to let her feel like she owned it. 

And he learns one more thing as he finally _feels_ after reading through (Name)'s diary and pressing his face into her favorite cardigans and lighting her favorite candle and rubbing her lotion into his hands at night. As he shuts the leather bound notebook filled with words of careful writing and immense love and unbelievable hope and so much pain, Seijuro is finally hit by the wave of grief that has held off for days now and he finally feels everything with so much clarity that it builds up inside him and it's so overwhelming that he never even stood a chance in trying to contain it.

Days after the death of his wife, Seijuro is finally hit by the grief and pain of loss, and he sits in bed, bent over pages of her musings and cries like he hasn't ever before, mourning for knowledge he is not sure he wants because it brings him so much pain.

He knows now that his refusal to accept her and the vulnerability she brought within him brought them both the pain that ultimately led to him losing her, but he wishes it didn't take that loss for him to learn why her death left him feeling so empty and then so full.

Because Akashi Seijuro finally learns that perhaps he had loved (Name) too. 

But it's far too late now, and admitting his love for her will not bring her back to him. He has already made his mistakes and now he will simply have to accept that they brought pain to not just him, but also to his wife and son. There is little he can do when she has already left him behind after a lifetime of accepting the pain she did not deserve. 

All he can do is resent her for leaving him behind with a love he cannot give her. 

All he can do is wish she had stayed.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by My Tears Ricochet by Taylor Swift


End file.
